Barely There
by eiahmon
Summary: Even after his return to his own time and the loss of the memories of his adventures, Xehanort can't shake the feeling that he's forgetting something.


It began with his eyes.

Of course, going to bed with brown eyes and waking up with yellow ones would freak anyone out, but Xehanort – who was not a morning person in any way, shape, or form – was his usual groggy self and didn't bother looking in a mirror after his morning shower. So it wasn't until he'd wandered into the kitchen looking for breakfast, and his mother dropped the plate she was holding with a startled shriek that he realized something was up.

"What did you do to your eyes?" she asked in shock, and Xehanort looked at her, puzzled. She then grabbed him by the shoulders and marched him back into the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror. It was then that he realized that, somehow, things had changed. He stared at his reflection in shock as his mother bustled out into the living room and called the school to tell him that he wouldn't be in today. She then dragged him to the local clinic. After all, one's eye color didn't change unless something serious had happened, and his mother fretted that maybe he had come in contact with something while swimming. It was while he was slumped in a chair, arms folded over his chest, staring at his boots while waiting to be seen that he noticed it.

Something felt... off.

And it wasn't just a case of waking up with a totally different eye color. No, something felt strange to him, like a half remembered dream. Whatever it was, he knew somehow that it was important, but he couldn't think of it, no matter how hard he tried. Even as the doctor poked and prodded him and took blood and hair samples to see if he had come in contact with anything toxic, he tried to think of what he was forgetting but came up empty.

_What am I forgetting?_

He was sent home with orders to drink lots of water to try and flush whatever out of his system, and once they were in the house that his maternal great, great grandfather had built, his mother stood behind him and made him drink two large glasses of water before she made him go to his room and lie down. He didn't object to being sent to bed like a sick child; all the hard thinking had given him a wicked headache, and a bit of rest in a dark room seemed like just the thing. He shut the curtains over his bedroom windows and laid down on the bed that he had just left only two hours before and closed his eyes.

_Why do I feel so strange?_

He relaxed with a quiet sigh, and the sounds of the surf crashing against the beach quickly lulled him to sleep.

**OOOOOO**

_Hands off my new vessel._

_Time stop!_

_That is what we do. Put the most precious memories in the back of our minds, where they're safe._

_But you developed a certain... resistance to darkness._

_This is where it all began. _

_There's no returning to the world above._

_I said, hands off!_

_Begone!_

**OOOOOO**

Xehanort bolted upright in bed, chest heaving as though he'd been running for miles. He raised a shaking arm to place a hand over his racing heart -

_Where darkness dwells..._

_- _and tried to catch his breath as the faint remnants of the dream slipped out of his grasp.

"Xehanort?" came his mother's voice as she cracked the door open and peeked her head in "Are you alright?"*

He nodded, even as he tried to slow his frantic breathing and calm his pounding heart. "I'm fine, just a dream." So focused was he on that, that he didn't realize that his mother had come into the room until she sat down on the bed beside him. "Mom?"

She smiled gently at him as she reached out and smoothed his sweaty hair back from his forehead. It was the same color as hers – white – and like hers, it fell like ocean waves down his back. Unlike him, though, her skin was fair, and her eyes were the color of the sea around the islands, but his face structure was very similar to hers, traits, it was believed, they had inherited from Lord Xehanort, the sea god that it was rumored they were descended from.

He returned the smile and leaned into her as she wrapped her arms around him. He was an only child, and while he loved his father, he had always been closer to his mother, bound together by their divine ancestor and the stories of him that they shared. Xehanort had been named after the sea god by his mother as she had held him in her arms for the first time, because, even then, he had borne a striking resemblance to Lord Xehanort.

"Are my eyes still yellow?" he asked, and she nodded. The faint blue light of the early morning allowed him to see her easily, and he couldn't miss the sad look that appeared on her face then. "I'm sure that I'll be fine."

She gently ran her fingers through his hair again. "I'm sure you will, but I can't bear the thought of anything hurting you."

He ducked his head as his face heated up. "I'm not a child, Mom."

"Not for too much longer. You're growing up so fast, but for now, you're still my little boy."

His face heated up even further. "Mom!"

She laughed quietly and coaxed him into lying down, so she could tuck him in. "Go back to sleep, Xehanort. You're not going to school today." She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. "Goodnight."

"Or good morning." Xehanort mumbled as he curled up on his side and closed his eyes.

She laughed lightly. "Good morning it is then." She brushed a few strands of his hair out of his face, and then he felt her weight leave the bed, and a moment later, his bedroom door closed. He listened to her footsteps receding down the hall as he dropped off to sleep.

**OOOOOO**

Two days after he woke up with suddenly yellow eyes, his test results came back, and they were all negative. There was nothing in his system that shouldn't be there, and the doctor was baffled as to what caused his radical eye color change. Fearing that it was something as of yet unknown to them in the water, the beaches were closed, and the islands were put on boil orders.

Xehanort was quite irritated at the beach closure, especially since that meant that he couldn't take out his little sailboat for some quality time with the wind and waves. He always felt at home out to sea; it made him think that he could escape the drab life on the island and find something better.

He had no reason to complain about his life, he knew. He had two loving parents, a roof over his head, food on the table, and a stable living running his father's general store once he was grown, but he wanted more. He had no desire to get married and raise a family as was expected of him. His parents simply called it "teenaged wanderlust" and assumed he'd outgrow it in time, but he knew better. Everyone got the urge to leave the islands at one point in their lives, they told him, and everyone came back, because there was nothing else out there.

Yet, as he stared longingly out his bedroom window at the currently forbidden water, he knew with a certainty that he couldn't explain that there _was _more out there. He needed only to go find it, but he didn't know how.

Behind him, he heard his door open, and his mother spoke. "Xehanort, your father needs you at the store."

He nodded silently and continued looking at the water until she came up and wrapped her arms around him from behind. "The beaches will be open again soon, little one. Just be patient. Now your father is waiting, so you have better get going."

With a sigh, he nodded again and stepped away from the window. He walked silently out of the front door and down the steps that connected the house, which was raised up on stilts, to the beach on which it sat. He then walked silently through town towards the store, lost in thought. He was vaguely aware of the sounds of children playing, of people chatting on street corners, of music coming from houses. The normal sounds of life on the Destiny Islands flowed around him, but he ignored it.

_I know there is more, there has to be. But... how do I know?_

"Hey, watch where you're going!"

Xehanort was startled out of his thoughts, and he jumped back in surprise just in time to stop himself from colliding with a small child on a tricycle. The small girl glared up at him with a pouty lip, which her older brother came charging at him, fists raised. Xehanort said nothing and made no move to defend himself, he simply glared at the boy he knew to be two years older than him.

_I will destroy your heart._

And for whatever reason, the older boy stopped. His eyes widened, and he snatched his little sister up by her arm and hauled her away. Xehanort blinked and shook his head slightly. What had that been about?

He continued walking, and he reached the store a few minutes later to find his father waiting for him, tapping his foot impatiently.

"Where have you been, Xehanort?" he demanded "I sent for you almost an hour ago."

_There are restrictions to movement through time. _

Xehanort blinked; he had only walked across town, which took fifteen minutes at most. He looked over his shoulder and was flabbergasted to see that the sun was beginning to sink as the afternoon moved on towards evening.

He looked back at his father, utterly confused. "I.. I.. I don't know. I just walked across town, Dad, honest! I swear that's all I did!"

Apparently, Josel could see the genuine confusion in his son's eyes, because his expression softened, and he gently laid a hand on Xehanort's shoulder and ushered him inside. "Help me get the inventory done, and then we'll get the shelves stocked and go home to see what your mother has made us for supper." Xehanort nodded, and the two of them worked in comfortable silence until the work was done. They then locked up the store and walked home, with one of Josel's arms looped affectionately around Xehanort's shoulders the entire time.

Still, as they climbed up the steps and walked into the warm, well lit interior of their house, to be greeted by the smells of home cooking and the sound of Riki's voice singing as she worked in the kitchen. Xehanort smiled when his father squeezed him lightly before disappearing into the back of house to wash up for dinner, and he walked into the kitchen, washed his hands, and asked his mother if she needed any help with supper.

Though his hands were busy, and his ears were tuned to his mother's voice, his mind still wandered.

The feeling of wrongness had only increased.

**OOOOOO**

_Darkness._

_Darkness surrounded him; there was no light to be seen anywhere. He looked all around, but he could see nothing, not even himself. He tried to call out, to who he did not know, but something wrapped around his neck, choking the words off before he could give them voice. He felt something wrapping around his ankles then, and he looked down to see inky tendrils of some kind climbing up his legs, while more swirling shadows seemingly formed from nowhere and wound around his arms. He struggled against them, but they only tightened their grip and began to drag him down. _

_His feet sank through the dark pool of which he had been standing, and he twisted and struggled against the tendrils that held him, but they refused to release him, and they pulled him down onto his_ _back and began to pull him under. Darkness swirled over him, covering him, and he managed to get one arm free. He reached up in a futile gesture -_

I can't breathe!

_- as the darkness swallowed him._

**OOOOOO**

Xehanort bolted upright in bed, a strangled scream escaping from him as he gasped for air. Wide panicked eyes darted about the darkened room, and he saw those tendrils in every shadow, reaching out to grab him, to drag him away to a cold place where no one would hear his screams, and -

He scrambled out of bed, got his legs tangled up in the blankets, and he fell to the wood slat floor with a thump. He cried out as he tried to untangle his legs -

_Darkness waits!_

_- _and once they were free, he stumbled from the room. He ran past his parents as they came out of their own room, alerted by his cry, and he scrambled on shaking legs through their door. He went for his mother's jewelry box without thinking about it, and he yanked the lid open so hard that he wrenched it off of one hinge. He didn't notice however; he rummaged frantically through the box, tossing things aside, looking for one thing in particular. Finally, he spotted it lying at the bottom, but before he could grab it, arms closed around him from behind, and he screamed in terror and struggled to get away.

"Xehanort?" came a loved voice from his right, and it penetrated the terror that clouded his senses. He began to calm down, and he realized that he was being held in his father's arms. He looked his parents's bedroom and -

_The shadows! Darkness, darkness everywhere!_

-somehow managed to get out of his father's embrace. He dove straight for his mother's jewelry box, and he grabbed what he had been searching for. His hand closed over the Wayfinder that he had had since infancy, and only then did the horror of his nightmare begin to recede. He clutched the Wayfinder to his heart as his father scooped him up and gently deposited him in the middle of his parents' bed. He hadn't slept in his parents' bed in six years, since he was eight, but he didn't protest as they laid down on either side of him. After the nightmare that he had just had, their presence was welcome comfort. Shivering, he closed his eyes and held the Wayfinder tightly as his father tucked him under the blanket and his mother smoothed his hair back.

"Go back to sleep, Xehanort." his mother said gently "We're here with you now."

He snuggled close to her, and she held him close like she had when he was small, and somehow, despite the fear that held his heart in its icy grip, he was able to go back to sleep.

**OOOOOO**

Xehanort stood on the shore of the play island, watching the setting sun in silence. Two days after his terrifying nightmare, the beaches were reopened, since nothing could be found in the water. That said though, his eyes were still yellow, and he had a feeling that they were going to stay that way as long as he lived.

He shivered again as the remembered horror of the nightmare reached up from his subconscious, and he reached up to place a hand over his shirt where the Wayfinder rested. The blue and white (Which are extremely rare colors for Thalassa shells) Wayfinder with its carved sea glass token had been given to him – so his mother claimed – by Lord Xehanort himself. She insisted that she had found inside his basket the morning after his birth, and that no one else had been in the house.

Whatever its origins, either divine or mundane, he had treasured it as a young child. Whenever he was upset or frightened, just holding it in his hands was enough to calm him, which is why he had gone for it after waking that night. The remembered horror of the dream receded as he placed his hand against, and he smiled slightly; it still worked.

Taking a shuddering breath, he looked out over the sea, past the -

_boundaries of the world_

- horizon, as far as he could see. The setting sun set the ocean aflame with sparkling red light, and he smiled again.

"I know you're out there." he said "And I'll find you. I don't know how yet, but I'll find you. I have to." He paused and allowed his hand to drop from the Wayfinder to hang normally at his side. "This world is too small."

With that, he turned away from the shore and turned back towards the main island. As he rowed his canoe towards home, he glanced at the sparkling ocean one more time.

"I'll find you." he said with finality, and then he turned back towards the main island and rowed his boat home.


End file.
